Documentary Note on Melville's Marginalia in Edmund Spenser's Poetical Works

This Melville family set of The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser (London: J. Bell, 1787-1788; 8 vols. bound in 4) was originally acquired by Herman Melville's father Allan Melvill, whose ink autograph appears on the verso of the series advertisement in the front matter of all four bound volumes. An ink gift inscription in the first volume records that Melvill received the set in 1803 from Obadiah Rich, Jr., later a foreign consul to Spain under President James Madison and an eminent London dealer in Americana. The pencil inscriptions "A Melvill" on the front free endpapers of the first and second volumes are not Allan Melvill's authentic signature but the writing of a family member endeavoring to duplicate his hand; in the second bound volume, the "signature" is augmented by "Lansingburgh," the New York town to which Maria Melville relocated her family in 1838, six years after her husband's death in 1832. Melville's front pastedown inscriptions "C. H. 2.," noting his second outward voyage around Cape Horn, confirm the presence of the set among volumes he carried aboard the clipper ship Meteor, captained by his brother Thomas, in 1860. Subsequent consultation by Melville is documented by his pencil inscription "Gansevoort Aug. 3d 1864" on the front flyleaf verso of the second volume. At some point afterward, he gave the set to his sister Augusta, as documented by a gift inscription in her hand on the front pastedown of the first volume. Ink autographs dated 3 March 1892 in each of the four volumes reveal the set was acquired by Emma M. Lewis five months after Melville's death on 28 September 1891. It was perhaps a descendant of Ms. Lewis who presented the set to the late Priscilla Ambrose, Melville's great granddaughter, after she had delivered a talk about her great grandfather in New Bedford, Massachusetts. This account of the set's recovery was conveyed by her to Hershel Parker, who first examined the set when it was still in Mrs. Ambrose's possession and went on to discuss it at various points in Herman Melville: A Biography (1996 and 2002) and Melville: The Making of the Poet (2008). Dennis C. Marnon facilitated her gift of the set to Houghton Library in 2005.

In addition to his readings in the set documented by him with pencil inscriptions in 1860 and 1864, Melville consulted this copy of The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser for epigraphs in his series of sketches "The Encantadas, or Enchanted Isles," which was serialized in Putnam's Monthly Magazine in 1854 and included in The Piazza Tales in 1856. As Parker observes, the set was beyond doubt consulted by Melville at numerous other points, and likely provided the inspiration for his fictional account in Pierre; or the Ambiguities (1852) of the title character's readings in his own deceased father's copy of Spenser's poetry (6). Marginalia in the set reveal his close study of Spenser's subject matter and rhetoric as well as parallel phrasing and topical echoes in the writings of Shakespeare and Milton. In a rare instance of marginal reference to his own writing, in connection with lines 204-207 of Spenser's "Colin Clout's Come Home Again" at 6.195, Melville alludes obliquely to a passage on the subject of death that appears in "The Blacksmith," chapter 112 of Moby-Dick. At an unknown point, much of the marginalia in all four bound volumes of the present set were transcribed into a later 5-volume edition of Spenser's Poetical Works, first owned by Herman but passed on by him to his sister Helen, according to her front inscription in vol. 1 (see Sealts No. 483).

With the exception of an unattributed annotation in the section of the first volume devoted to dedicatory sonnets by Spenser (an annotation that may in fact be in Melville's hand), marginalia in the set present no compelling problems for attribution. Straight and curved horizontal pencil lines appearing in the first, third, and fourth volumes (for instance, pp. 6.208 and 7.083) are rare but not unprecedented in books that are known to survive from Melville's library. Similarly, Melville's use of marks to designate the beginning- and end-points of a passage that caught his interest on 1.140 is rare but not unprecedented. Despite the authentic character of the marginalia, it should be kept in mind that the set was owned at various times by other Melville family members, and for several decades it did leave the possession of Melville's descendants. As with examination of any marginal markings, which lack the corroborative character of recognizable letter forms, users should practice caution while endeavoring to study Melville's engagement with the set.

Publication: First published at Melville's Marginalia Online, 2016.

Selected studies that cite this copy: Hershel Parker, Herman Melville: A Biography. 2 vols. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996 and 2002) and Melville: The Making of the Poet (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2008). See also Penny L. Hirsch, "Melville's Spenser Edition for The Encantadas," Melville Society Extracts 50 (May 1982), 15-16.